Any Help Much Much Appreciated

[theironsden]

Hi

I run www.theironsden.co.uk

Im happy with the site but am fully aware it doesnt look great. This is where I was hoping for some help. Its ran in catalog 9.03.

I am a complete novice designer (yes I know it shows) I basically want to get everything tidy and professional looking. Take for example my best effort with the right hand side tab. What I would like is square boxes that are the same for my design to put the info in. Im also not happy the header and would like the page to be central not spread from left to right. Im probably asking for alot.

But any help or suggestions would be great. We do have some very good ranking on google so I think were happy with the seo side of things but if anyone has any ideas of getting you name out there on a small budget that would also be of help.

[Sean Williams]

Hi Daniel
just a few points that stand out for me
I'd go for a fixed width site, rather than fluid, then you can design the look of the site precisely.
Change the background image on the logo header to match that of the logo (white?).
I'd put in a line of separation between each item in the best sellers and new products side bars - they are v. hard to read as is.
Your menu bar has no links for T&C's, Delivery Info, About Us, Contact Us etc.

There's a recent post to the forum describing how having the HSBC logo on their site dropped their business by 20%, so you might want to bin that!

HTH

[Rich Brady]

I agree with Sean, fixed with is what I would do.

TBH, I don't think you're site is "cool" enough for gamers. You need to be looking at Game & Play because they're who you have to compete with.

I'd suggest getting rid of the Best Sellers and New Products Lists and use fragments to direct traffic to:

1. XBOX
2. Playstation
3. Nintendo

With their respective consoles on each section page. This is important because at the moment you have a massive list in the form of your left hand navigation and people will not read through it.

Use content overlay ion GA and I bet you find people only click on the top 4 or 5 sections?

[theironsden]

hi many thanks to both of you for your replies.

i completely agree with everything you have said.

I have taken out the new products and best selling lists on the left hand side. and have removed the hsbc link just in case as at the moment if i lost 20% i wouldnt be selling anything

i was wondering if you could help me with some of your replies.

firstly I am trying to shorten the left hand lists. Basically I only want to view one level. so take nintendo wii. i have that then under that 3 sections for consoles, games and accessories. i would like to only show Nintendo Wii. So people click that and get taken to the page where they choose between the three sections. I can make this happen if i change the layout to prime but I would like to keep my smart design. so is there a way of telling actinic to only show that top level??

Secondly you mentioned changing the site to a fixed layout. I would love to do that. But how?? Is they a way of telling actinic how to do that?? is there a particular layout i need to use??? or do I need to save my pennies by dreamweaver and start the very steap learning curve??

many thanks again.

[theironsden]

sorry me again

forgot my third

how the heck do you change the colour of just the smart header.

if i change it in the palette options it changes it for other things.

many thanks

[leehack]

By the level of your questions, i'd say you want to contact someone that knows what they are doing in this area. Learning html and css is a long journey, you must have better things to spend that time on surely like learning how to market products and writing content. You do what you are good at and let a designer do what they are good at.

If you enter a flooded market in a half baked fashion, you will end up nowhere. Have a look on the actinic site for a designer local to you. Get yourself a good one and they will have paid for themselves in just a few weeks.

[Rich Brady]

ATM your widths a specified as 100%, you'll need to change thes to 1000px for example. Also, you should wrap a div around you page content and align it to center. It will look much better than justified left.

If you want to change the colour of any particular color that is denoted by a theme palette colour, but keep the rest as it is you'll need to go into the CSS and change it in there.

If you search the forum for smart navigation or cgi links, I'm pretty sure you'll find nav solutions that you can have a play with.

Dreamweaver? Get yourself firefox and the fire bug add-on will show you where things are, but also allow you to try things within the browser in real time.

You'll have to weigh up the cost/time implications of doing it yourself, but you could sound out a designer to make the chages for you rather than buying DW.

[theironsden]

hi
many thanks for the pointer to css. Have sorted that now header is now all white. and have centred the logo so think that looks better. will be woking on the logo in a bit to make it a bit better.

any ideas on getting the sections to just show one up??